Sensorial analysis and wine

- Analysing sensations in order to value and share them

- Wine’s colour

- Wine’s perfume

- Wine’s taste

Analysing sensations in order to value and share them

Analysing sensations means not feeling them. Feeling is a must, evaluating and sharing are possibilities when talking about sensations. Unfelt sensations can’t surely be valued nor shared. When analysing sensations, what is felt is what is being valued. The process is very fast, actions take place almost together. First you do what you need in order to feel, then you think, eventually you analytically ponder what your senses felt, meticulously questioning about it. Finally it is time for the sharing, the experience narration. Sensors and mind must be disposed, attention must be high, if the aim is to sense well and think well to what was sensed. This is what being human means: practicing the capabilities to think sensations and to sense thoughts. Consistency, balance and integrity magnificently boost the process. All that reaches our senses, through the senses reaches the point where everything comes together, where everything is received, all is recorded and inspired, focused, introjected, merged and melted, unifying, understanding, perceiving; everything that emerges from such a point is something felt, valued, itemized, organized, weighted, thought and known. This point lies between the eyes, inside the mind. It is called Man, and it is where our nature fathoms itSelf. From there, the eyes see, the nose smells and the ears hear; the touch is pondered from that place and the taste too, while in the highest palate’s vault, there is where we sense. Breathing is required, in order to think and to deeply sense, for breath nourishes attention, and attention increases the sensorial power, galvanizing reception and elaboration, energizing senses and mind in their profound but fast connective process. In order to illustrate and describe sensations the sensitive thinking shall write. Let the pen to sensations and find the most beautiful and melodious, the most mellow way to describe and tell what your senses cought. It is not hard, it is wonderful and fun indeed. Nobody shall be not authentic. Anybody can do it well. Time and repeated applications are the means for anybody to succeed at better understanding the true nature of sensations, hence understanding the true nature of what’s being sensed. Tongue is a descriptive tool, use it that way. Shape it from and for it. Such an exemplary pliancy has no equals. No obligation shall limit sensations, no obligation shall limit descriptions. Our sensorial liberty is naturally maximum. Talk about that good fragrance you sensed, narrate its virtues and describe its flaws, if any. Talk about the flavour, talk about its composition and decomposition as they get revealed by the taste. With an effort the natural core of what is sensed shall be fathomed, than its narration will be a detailed, faithful and explanatory in recollection of the contact.Attention is essential if describing is the aim when writing about sensations; attention allows this sensible thought’s perfect reception, elaboration and extension. Attention and breath must be the players in such a vital action as the thinking and describing of what the senses have seized.

Wine’s colour

Wine’s colour shall be watched over a bright light, several times from several points of view. Move the wine in its glass and look at it, move the glass and see how the light changes it. Using these attentions, see this and everything else in wine’s colour. The intensity: how strong the colour is, observe it well; count the pigments, whose thickness is the tint’s strength. Eyes and mind shall laser-point the spot. Intensity shall be valued through transparency, any colour’s opposite. The shades: what’s the tint’s tonality? What are its hue, its strength and its condition? How many tones does the colour reveal? Is it alive or does it show the yellow, potentially brown, shade of a lack in integrity? The density: watch closely how the component’s richness eases or halts the wine’s movement in the glass. Value duration and weight of the crystal tracing extract. Value how relatively oily the wine is. You shall fully exploit your eyes while looking at it all. Sight is a muscle, intellectual and physical devoted application will strengthen, preserve and develop it.

Wine’s perfume

Approaching wine, first of all, inhale two or three times, not too deeply. These inhalations help the olfactory receptors to get accustomed to alcohol’s aggressive causticity. Once this is done, we can get into the aroma: now the intake must be deep and the eyes must be closed (no sight will galvanize the thought over the intake: try to do it now, close your eyes and inhale; feel the odour now stronger in your nose). Never stop, when the perfume comes in. Never halt before sensations; we shall indeed make the intake longer and deeper. Bring the air, dressed in piercing, inebriating alcohol, to the centre of your eyes. That is where it shall be sensed. Fixate the detail we want to study, aroma’s quantity and quality; quickly and repeatedly compare different wines. Repeat the inhalation as many times as you need to sense all what is sensible. Exhaust wine with your nose: its perfume has to be pierced by the breath, this way its relevance will be felt. Enter the glass with your nose: let the wine and its designed receptor almost touch. Let your naris reach the wine from a transverse plane, thus the sensorial inhaling surface can be enlarged. Twirl the wine in its glass, then do it over, and over again, so that the aromatic substances can well and profusely volatilize. Close your eyes, remember, and smell wine’s perfume. With these considerations, with these instructions smell this and any perfume in wine: after few inhalations, habituation could take away strength and compositional brightness to the aroma, but keep smelling, progressively consistency, volume and expressive power will be better understood. The variably majestic alcoholic vigour is strength for the mass. Perfume’s density: figure a mantle, it is the inhaled air thickness, its olfactory touch. Is that air airy or rubbery? Is it dry or mellow? Is it watery or pulpy? Am I able or not to pierce this perfume I am breathing in? Perfume’s shape: is it a sharp sting or a round caress what your nose is touched by? The inhaled aromas could be spherical, if by different forces balanced; they could be round, for sweetness and acidic-bitterness proportion. Is it concave or convex? Is it instead acute, for too many sharp notes, or flat, for no energy nor fragrance? Perfume’s content: what am I sensing? Let’s analyse the basic trend and the leanings: how is this perfume like? Acidic, bitter, salty, sweet. Balanced. Fruity. Turgid. Fresh. Warm, smooth, ripe, withered, rancid, candied, sulphurous, acetic, dairy, blurred, ligneous, gone. Perfume’s structure and shades: unified by the first breath, its composing elements need the following intakes to be differentiated again. Ponder balance and integrity, assess positivity and negativity. Breath it in and feel it, as many times as its components are. Sense them all, one by one, than fuse them together for the resultant sensation: the perfume. Try it once for the fruit, than again for the oak, so for the development, for the cleanliness and for the integrity. Let the nose act and re-act, studying the same perfume, until there will be no veiled secret in its structure and shade. Perfume’s recollection: the sense of smell carries memories heavy loaded with emotional sensations. What does this aroma remind me of? Where have I felt it before? By which wine was it revealed and how different was it from this one here?

Wine’s taste

In order to feel its touch and flavour, wine must be moved and fondled while it is in the mouth; all the receptors we have should touch it: every mouth’s covered area adds fullness and fluidity to the taste. Using much attention, you shall sense this and much more in a wine’s taste. Wine’s taste: the flavour shall be sensed. Its balance shall be valued. Its pleasantness. Quantitative and qualitative compositional harmony. Taste’s several hints shall be perceived, each with its own particular intensity: pressures and counter-pressures, convergences and edges. Don’t forget that taste is any wine’s sensorial echo. Taste the acidic blade, the bitter tail and the smooth mass. Timbre and harmonica for any flavour’s multi-dimensionality. Taste acidity while wine is still in your mouth, taste bitterness while swallowing it, taste smoothness both times. Everytime. Freshness shall be sensed, or its partial or clear evolution, together with warmth, that in wine is what the alcoholic degree gives. Lastly, you shall feel what wine does while being swallowed, through the uvula, maximum detector of any integrity’s flaw. Sulphurous must not pinch it, nor acetic shall sting it. An integer wine, just like the purest water, will not harm nor mutate an uvula’s calmness. Wine’s touch: wine must be palpated while in your mouth; its thigh or watery fibre shall be perceived. Sense its specific weight, sense it dense or fluent, sense its tissue’s thickness. Its density or its fluidity shall be valued by your sensing taste buds. This is what a wine’s touch is: an incredibly precise detector for consistency. You should value both wine’s totality and its sensorial details, using continuous sensorial intellect. Feel it, contact it many repeated times, once for each test. Attentively perceive each micro-test’s result. Think about it, thus evaluate it, than a narrative description can be done. Finally combining the three explained phases we will discover how perfume dresses taste in aromas, and taste dresses aroma in flavours. Sight works for both, dressing perfume and taste for the eyes.